When was the last time you got a good night’s rest? I think we can all agree that sleep is important, but have you thought about some of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation? Do you want to know how to sleep better? We have an expert for you that will tell you everything you need to know about sleep! 

Dr. Michael Breus is an expert sleep researcher. He is also a father, so he knows how hard won it can be to get sleep when you are a parent. With compassion and evidence-based wisdom, Dr. Breus is going to give you sanity-saving tools to get you the best night’s sleep. We will talk about everything from when you should take a nap, when is the best time to sleep train, and how to revisit your bad sleeping habits. 

Whether you want more sleep or just more quality sleep, this is the episode for you! Sleep can allow us to give our all to our jobs while also giving our children the care they need. Sleeps heals and restores, and it’s time to take it seriously! 

Show Highlights:

• Dr. Breus’ best advice for parents of new babies to minimize the effect of sleep deprivation. 
• The shift methodology is a helpful tool for babies before sleep training. 
• Learn all about the powerful effects of the “Napalatte.” 
• How to make the most out of a nap. 
• Sleep deprivation is different from person to person. 
• There is no replacement for lost sleep, but extra sleep can definitely help! 
• Why you might want to sleep separately. 
• What kinds of sleep problems people develop because of their children. 
• 5 Steps to get your sleep act back together. 
• Get some sunlight!
• Know when you need to seek professional help. 

Resources:

All the info you need for sleep issues and work

http://www.thesleepdoctor.com/

On Becoming Baby Wise

Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems

You believe in your vocation or career that your time and energy is important, but you also believe in your responsibilities as a parent. How can you find a balance between the two? Can you follow your career or civic passions while still showing up as a parent? There are also more expectations put on parents than ever before. Between career and that social pressure, it can feel like you are burning the candle at both ends. 

This is exactly why I am so excited to have my friend Will Mount on the show today. He gets the pressure. He feels the burden of wanting to care for his son well, while also pursuing a job as an attorney for Juvenile Defense. Social justice is important to both Will and his wife, but they also feel the weight of these unmet expectations. In this episode, Will will share what has worked for his family, how he has created his priorities to serve his family, and which challenges were particularly difficult for him. 

You are not alone! Let Will’s story be an example of how to make it work as a working parent. 

More in this episode: 

• Why would someone want to work with Will or his law partner Judith? 
• What it is like to be a parent with a high-stress job. 
• Will and his wife both have work they believe in, but balancing that with parental responsibility is important. 
• Battling expectations of our society and the impact on our parenting. 
• Each age has their own challenges. 
• Take time out to take care of yourself and your spouse/significant other. 
• How having Liam has affected Will’s work life. 
• Find opportunities to bond with your child. 
• The surprising benefits of raising a child. 
• Why having good people around you makes all the difference. 

Links: 

http://dzmlegal.com/

The Modern Dad’s Dilemma 

We all wish we had just a few more hours in our day. Between ferrying children around, keeping the house running, and trying to be successful in our career, it seems impossible for us to be able to get it all done in a day. Luckily, there are people like Ari Meisel in the world who are hacking productivity through sleek systems, outsourcing, and automation. I first heard about Ari from his book, Less Doing. I then became involved with a company he started, Get Leverage. Ari has recently left Get Leverage in order to refocus his life on his real passion: interacting with real people to give them real solutions to all of their productivity challenges.  

Productivity is all about reducing stress for Ari. He is a father of four kids, and he only works while the kids are in school. That means his working hours have to be productive. Today, Ari is going to share all of the systems he has in place for improving his productivity and prioritizing time with his family. After all, everything he does is to improve the quality of life for the people he loves. That passion is then imbued into each and every task he sets his mind to, and mindset is key. 

Listen this week for all the tips and strategies you can use to find a little more time in your day. Ari mentions so many wonderful resources and tools that you do not want to miss.

Show Highlights:

• Why Ari left Get Leverage and decided to work with people again. 
• How Ari works from 9-3 while his kids are at school.
• Idea capture is Ari’s obsession.
• What kinds of automation is Ari doing to streamline his life, and the important things he is not automating. 
• Have systems and procedures in place. Ari will show you how. 
• On-demand labor is key.
• Ari’s personal goals for the new year. 
• How the Less Doing Lab can help you in just about every area of your life.
• The psychology of productivity. 
• Having a virtual assistant service is invaluable. 
• Ari’s thoughts on childcare solutions. 

Resources:

Find out all about Ari online

Ari Recommends: 

Trello

TaskRabbit

Amazon Fresh

Are you a working Mom? And are you struggling to find the right balance, between your family and your work life? If so, you're really going to enjoy today's show, because we have Suzanne Brown with us today.  She's a successful entrepreneur and also the author of Mompowerment - Insights From Successful Professional Part-Time Working Moms Who Balance Career And Family. 

Suzanne is a Strategic Marketing and Business Consultant and she helps seasoned entrepreneurs to figure out their high-level marketing challenges by assisting them with the writing of their business plans and with working out their market potential. As an author, she noticed a need in the marketplace and decided to go ahead and fill it, not really knowing what she was getting herself into, at the time! She is also a Speaker and an avid international traveler. Suzanne is married to a really wonderful man, who is also her IT guy, amongst the thousands of other things that he does and she is a Mom to two boys, aged six and a half and almost four. Suzanne has been working part-time ever since her boys were born, so her career has really become woven into her family life. Listen in now, and find out how she manages to find the right balance between these two important aspects of her life.

There is a phenomenon that parents are facing today, with the vast number of cross-currents around what they're expected to do for their children, in terms of their physical and emotional well being. Parents also face having increasingly fewer resources today, when it comes to both time and a network of family and friends to help them.  There have been a number of books written about these difficulties and today we have the author Amanda Turner on the show with us. She has approached this dilemma from a different angle with the publications that she's written, one of which is called Vagabonding With Kids. She even refers to parenting as an extreme sport!  Listen in now, to find out more about Amanda's humorous approach to parenting and travelling with kids.

Amanda writes under the name A.K.Turner. She has already written a parenting humour series and she's currently writing her travel parenting humour series, which is Vagabonding With Kids. She also writes a blog and has her own podcast. Amanda loves to connect with readers and parents and with anybody who is interested in parenting as a multicultural pursuit. Listen in to find out more about Amanda and the fabulous books she writes.

Show highlights:

• Amanda explains what prompted her to start writing her books.
• How Amanda sees her children as a real benefit in her life.
• How travelling is an important priority for Amanda's family.
• Dealing with the discomfort of relocating your family to another country for a few months.
• The wonderful effect that all the travelling has had on Amanda's children.
• What prompted Amanda to start writing her Vagabond Series.
• Some encouragement and tips to get aspiring writers going.
• Some advice from a seasoned family traveller about taking an extended trip with your family.
• How the travelling lifestyle really works for Amanda's family.
• The mindset you need to have in place to really benefit from travelling.
• Adapting to a travelling lifestyle.
• Steering clear of a conventional lifestyle and finding your own best way with your kids.

Links:

Amanda's website: www.vagabondingwithkids.com

Amanda on Twitter: @vagabondingkids

Resource mentioned:

Book: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

My guest today is Michelle Kallen, a senior associate in the DC office of the large, NY-based law firm of Paul Weiss. Michelle has a 3-year-old son and a husband who is a doctor in surgical pathology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Michelle shares how she spends her busy days working at the office, working from home, and taking care of her son, Gabriel. Managing work between clients and partners, writing briefs, and being a wife and mommy make for very busy days for Michelle!

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• An overview of Michelle’s parenting story
• How her son was born prematurely and she secured generous maternity leave of 5 months
• Today, her son is in preschool and a nanny helps out at home
• Going through the NICU experience with a husband who is a doctor
• Balancing work and love for her career with a new child
• Traveling as a nursing mother with a breast pump
• What it’s like in “big law” being an associate with a young child
• The perspective of parents with a healthy child
• Parenting focus of the Women’s Bar Association in DC
• Challenges for Michelle’s husband in becoming a father
• The disparity in leave taken by moms and dads
• Gender role differences with millennials and their differing parenting habits
• Michelle’s advice to her younger self: “We all put this façade on Facebook and in pictures in our offices of the perfect parent life. No one posts the horrible moments and challenges or reality parenting. No one has it all together and I’m happy to share the difficulties. Every day is a new struggle and a new joy.”

Do you struggle at times to know the best way to go about parenting your child? It can really be a tough call, especially when it comes to the emotional aspects. Some expert advice can really go a long way to help frazzled parents to navigate this often tricky road.  Listen in, as Elisabeth Stitt offers you some really great advice on today's show. 

Elisabeth is a Parent Educator and a Parent Coach and she will be joining us today, to talk about her her consulting practice and also about her new book, Parenting As A Second Language. She gives parents the concrete skills they really need, in order to become more effective, and she also supports them in the emotional journey of parenting. Listen in to find out what Elisabeth has to share with you today, about how to make deliberate and clear choices, when parenting your child and also about finding out if your parenting practices really are in line with your goals and your values.

Show highlights:

• Elisabeth explains her Fifty Item Family Assessment, that she uses to give parents a chance to assess what's actually going on in their home.
• Elisabeth explains how she got into this particular line of work.
• The challenges that parents face, with the lack of real community, in today's fast paced world.
• Elisabeth talks about her former life, as a teacher, where she liked to teach about the more alternative things, like character education and mindfulness.
• Elisabeth, as a teacher, often felt that the parents were getting in the way of who their children were, uniquely and also of who they wanted to become.
• The impact of the judgment of others and of society as a whole, on people's ability to parent effectively.
• Elisabeth talks about her book, Parenting As A Second Language, which is really a gentle guide to parenting, with various exercises for self-reflection, to help you find your way in a variety of topics.
• How Elisabeth helps parents to find the balance between authoritative and permissive parenting.
• Elisabeth explains how she works with parents- it's really all about their values.
• Family meetings- one of Elisabeth's favorite tools for families.
• Finding the right balance between having your children independent and standing on their own two feet and staying connected, as a family unit.
• Really knowing what you care about strengthens you and acts as a buffer against the judgment of others.

Links:

Elisabeth's website: www.elisabethstitt.com   Elisabeth highly recommends that you sign up for her newsletter.

Parenting As A Second Language- A Guide For Joyful Navigating The Trials Triumphs And Tribulations Of Parenthood by Elisabeth Stitt is available from Amazon.

The guest on today's show is Karla Miller. Karla writes for the Washington Post Magazine's weekly @ Work Advice Column, where she answers questions on everything from co-worker clashes to employee rights issues. Karla also works full time at a local accounting firm and volunteers as a wife and mother of two children, who are now four and six years old. Listen in, to hear Karla's story.

Karla's Parent At Work Story started before she was even technically a parent while working for the same accounting firm that she does now. Her plan was to leave work and get her house in order about a week before her baby was due to arrive. About six weeks before her due date, she woke up to find that her water had broken. That was lesson number one: Children don't give a hoot about what your plans are.  After spending a day in the hospital in labor, she was given an emergency C-Section. With that, came lesson two for Karla: You really do need excellent co-workers and a supportive work environment, in order to survive the experience of becoming a parent. Fortunately for Karla, she had all of that. Listen in now, to find out more about what Karla has learned through her experience of working and becoming a parent.

Today, Karla talks to Tom about:

• Her really supportive work environment.
• That with parenting, there are always things to juggle and to take into consideration.
• The often overlooked difficulties of being a stay at home parent.
• The work she does for the accounting firm, which, is fortunately quite flexible, and she can do a lot of it on her laptop, wherever she is, or via email.
• All the different elements that she has to balance, in her busy life.
• Her particular blend of flexibility and freedom.
• The stress that comes from having work flexibility.
• The double standards in people's attitudes towards male working parents, as compared with their attitudes towards women parents, who work.
• What she sees, as a writer, with parenting in the working world.
• That it's sometimes a relief and a welcome change of pace, to go into work.
• How she makes it work, as a working parent.
• A tip she has for parents- don't over share or over justify yourself for being unavailable work, it's not necessary to share too much detail.
• That every family is different.
• How she landed her writing job at the Washington Post.
• That turning a problem into a story helps you to get a better perspective on it.
• The kinds of concerns that Managers tend to have, about their workers with children.
• Parents will sometimes try to take advantage of their situation, to get a better deal at work.
• Moms often learn to get much more done in much less time.
• The sense of camaraderie that can develop between co-workers, when supporting and helping each other.
• The advice that she would give to her 'before she had children' self. 
• The little things that one tends to miss, as a parent, like going out for a meal and being able to eat with both your hands.

Follow Karla's Work

If you're a new parent and you're finding it much more work and a lot less fun than you thought it would be, you're really going to gain a lot from this show. Today, in the first episode, Tom explains that his idea for the show came from his own experience as a father of four children and the juxtaposition of two books, Jennifer Senior's All Joy And No Fun and Bruce Feiler's The Secrets Of Happy Families. Listen in discover how you can live a happy life, even though you have children.

Today, Tom explains that Jennifer Senior's book is about the phenomenon that parents generally score lower on happiness surveys, when compared with people without children and that this flies in the face of the common belief that having children is the crowning achievement in life. Ms. Senior profiles parents who struggle with expectations placed on them, often by themselves, to raise well-adjusted children, with increasingly fewer available resources, such as time, money, or a network of support from family. Thomas points out that the book does, however, have a silver lining, in that most parents do experience a significant amount of joy and meaning in their lives, due to having children. Bruce Feiler's book, on the other hand, points to some possible solutions to the dilemma of parenting. He looks to the lessons learned in business and in other fields, to see if these methods can be used to teach families to function better. He gives an example from the book, of a family who adopted the use of agile management, a project management tool used in the software industry, to help with family meetings and to streamline the hectic morning routine. 

Tom says that he hasn't managed to replicate agile management in his house, however, he does dream! Today, Tom tells you what you can expect to hear in his future episodes and he explains that although solutions are great, at times, it really helps just to know that the problems faced by parents are both common and survivable. Listen in today, as Thomas shares his own parenting story by reading the relevant chapter from his book, You're Pregnant, You're Fired.

Some highlights include: 

• How he was offered a position as an Assistant to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, in 2005, when he was thirty-three years old, married and had a ten-month-old son.
• How little idea he had, prior to the birth of his son, of how much work it would involve to be a parent.
• Sharing the responsibilities of parenting with his wife, who was also an attorney.
• Their dog, Sawyer, who had health problems and added to the stress of parenting.
• His decision to spend as much time as possible with his son.
• His joining the US Attorney's Office in the fall of 2006 – a harrowing situation for all new prosecutor's, given the long hours and stress.
• The stress of coming home to a strung out kid and a stressed out wife, after a demanding day at work.
• His battle with insomnia.
• How his own routine became more extreme.
• He was learning a lot, but it was difficult.
• The birth of his second son, Jonah.
• How unprepared he was for having two children- no one ever got a break!
• Being diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder.
• That no one at work knew what he was going through.
• A survey that showed that men with families have it easier than women with families do, in the workplace, yet men tend to be more heavily penalized for taking time off work.
• His realization that he could no longer maintain the way he was working, trying to balance work and family.
• His work move to a less stressful situation and his coming down with respiratory tract infection.
• Opening his own firm and dealing with the guilt of his departure from the US Attorney's office- in the midst of an economic meltdown.
• His realization that it was having children that had made his balancing act so difficult.
• Making the choice- career or family?
• The lack of support by the government, for working families and policy matters that are worth debating in this regard.

Link:

Tom's website: www.spigglelaw.com/podcast